In 1983, over 37,000 people in the United States alone were seriously or fatally injured in residential and institutional fires, with property damage amounting to about six billion dollars.
Many of these fires were initiated in, or exacerbated by, flammable upholstered furniture or bedding, since the conventional materials used in furniture and bedding such as cotton or polyester padding and foamed polyurethane are a ready source of fuel for the propagation of flames. Thus, it has been considered highly desirable by upholstery and bedding manufacturers to provide some sort of barrier between the flames and the fuel supply in the upholstered furniture or bedding which would cause the flame to extinguish once it reaches the barrier for lack of fuel.
Both government and industry have conducted extensive research into developing such a barrier for home furnishings that would either be nonflammable or at least retard the propagation of a fire. In conjunction with finding an effective material to act as a fire barrier, consumer considerations have required any such materials to be functional, aesthetically acceptable and reasonably priced.
Unfortunately, past efforts to develop a suitable fire barrier have not been very effective. Thus, even fabrics that will not ignite from a smoldering cigarette that are considered to be class 1 fabrics under the UFAC upholstery fabric classification test will burn when placed in contact with an open flame, thus leading to the ignition of the underlying batting in a cushion or mattress.
So-called fire retardant foam coatings for draperies, liners and backcoatings for upholstery, as well as chemical treatments for apparel fabrics that attempt to provide a fire retardant quality to the fabric are commercially available. Unfortunately, these materials are, at best, self extinguishing when the source of the flame is removed. If the flame source is not removed, these materials will char, lose their integrity and, most importantly, not prevent the flame from reaching materials underneath the fabric covering, which act as a major source of fuel for the fire.
Other attempts at solving the flammability problem have centered on the use of inherently nonflammable fabrics such as fiber glass which can be used, for example, in draperies. It has been discovered, however, that the glass fibers are self abrasive in that they rub against each other thereby becoming self-destructing due to the abrasive action. Thus, hand washing and line drying is, out of necessity, the recommended cleaning procedure for such fabrics. Moreover, the brittle and broken glass fibers tend to be very irritating to the skin thus rendering any of the applications of the fabric unsuitable where there is extensive skin contact.
In spite of these difficulties, attempted solutions to the flammability problem have continued to make use of glass fibers due to its inherently nonflammable nature. In this regard, the self-destructing characteristics of fiber glass can be mitigated if the glass fabrics are coated with a suitable material which will encapsulate the fibers with a particular coating, thus minimizing or eliminating skin contact with the fibers. If such coatings are employed for a fire resistant application, the coating itself obviously can not be flammable or a source of fuel.
Such coatings are available and usually consist of a polymeric binder and suitable fillers. For example, the synergistic action of antimony oxide and halogen containing compounds in such coatings is well known. A typical coating of this type may consist of a halogenated polymer such as polyvinyl chloride, polyvinylidine chloride or polyvinyl fluoride or copolymers containing vinyl chloride, vinylidine chloride or vinyl fluoride and finely dispersed antimony oxide. In addition to these compounds, halogenated plasticizers are often employed to alter the hand of the coating as well as to provide a halogen component to the coating. Phosphorous derivatives are also often incorporated to contribute smolder resistance, and aluminum trihydrate is a well known additive since at elevated temperatures, the endothermic decomposition of aluminum trihydrate contributes water vapor to smother the flames.
Other systems employ highly brominated organic compounds such as decarbromodiphenyl oxide with antimony oxide. In noncritical applications where leaching by water is not a factor, simple phosphate salts such as diammonium phosphate have been employed as a fire resistant agent.
Thus, there are an abundance of formulations and recipes known to those skilled in the area of fire retardant chemistry. It has heretofore been widely believed, however, that an effective fire barrier or blocking material would have to be impervious to air to be an effective fire barrier. Thus, prior art coatings for glass fabrics were designed to form an impermeable coating on, for example, fiber glass fabric (Belgian Patent No. 889,724) or the fiber glass fabric was laminated to an impermeable film or foil (U.S. Pat. No. 2,801,427). However, impermeable coatings do not permit the fabric to breathe, and it is well known that fabrics for upholstery or bedding applications need to be breathable in order to be suitable for such applications.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a breathable, nonflammable glass fiber fabric in which the glass is mechanically protected from self-destruction.